Toubon law: when your documents must be in French

What the Toubon law says

Loi n° 94-665 du 4 août 1994 relative à l'emploi de la langue française, known as the Toubon law, rests on a simple principle: in France, French must appear in certain documents. It does not ban other languages. It requires French to be there, and not to be pushed into the background.

To know whether a document is caught, look at who it is meant for: a consumer, the general public, a public body or an employee.

Documents where French is mandatory

Goods, products and services (article 2)

Article 2 makes French compulsory in the naming, offer, presentation, instructions for use and description of the scope and conditions of the warranty of any good, product or service, as well as in invoices and receipts. The same rule applies to all written, spoken or audiovisual advertising.

In practice, this covers:

• packaging, labels and product sheets;
• user instructions and manuals (see our guide on language requirements for technical instructions);
• warranty certificates and terms;
• invoices and receipts;
• brochures, catalogues and adverts;
• terms and conditions of sale describing the offer (see translating terms and conditions of sale).

There is an exception for the names of typical products and specialities with a foreign name that are widely known to the public.

Public signs and announcements (article 3)

Any sign or announcement displayed on the public highway, in a place open to the public or on public transport, and intended to inform the public, must be in French.

Contracts involving public bodies (article 5)

Contracts to which a public-law entity, or a private entity performing a public service mission, is a party must be drafted in French, whatever their subject or form. If you bid for a French public contract, your tender and the resulting contract will be in French.

The workplace (French Labour Code)

The law introduced rules now found in the Code du travail:

The consequence is direct: under article L1221-3, an employer cannot rely, against the employee, on clauses of a contract concluded in breach of the rule. And where the French version and the translation differ, only the text in the foreign employee's language can be invoked against them. For more, see translating an employment contract.

What the law does not require

• Contracts between private companies fall outside article 5, which only covers public bodies and those performing a public service mission.
• Other languages are not banned. Instructions can be multilingual, provided French is included.
• Official terminology is not binding on private parties. The Conseil constitutionnel (décision n° 94-345 DC du 29 juillet 1994) struck down the obligation for individuals and companies to use terms approved by the terminology commissions. It still applies to public bodies.
• Documents received from abroad or intended for foreign nationals are exempt from article L1321-6.
• The law itself does not call for a sworn translation. A careful French version is enough to meet the requirement that French be present.

Common pitfalls

1. Instructions supplied in English by a foreign manufacturer. An importer placing the product on the French market must provide French instructions.
2. French in small print. Article 4 requires that, where a statement is translated, the French version be as legible, audible or intelligible as the foreign one.
3. A job title in English ("Key Account Manager") with no French explanation in the contract.
4. Staff rules or safety instructions issued only in the group's language.
5. A rough translation of the warranty, creating discrepancies between versions and a risk of dispute.

Bringing your documents into line, step by step

1. List the documents given to customers, displayed to the public or handed to employees in France.
2. Sort them by applicable rule: article 2, article 3, article 5 or the Labour Code.
3. Identify the source language. Chinese or English instructions must be translated into French; French staff rules can be translated for your foreign teams.
4. Use a subject specialist: warranties and contracts are legal texts, HR instructions are administrative ones.
5. Check the layout: same size, same position, same legibility for the French.
6. Keep dated versions so you can prove what was provided and when.

With Manuce, you upload the file in the translation workspace (Word, PDF with a text layer, PowerPoint, Excel and more), the word count is taken from the actual document and the quote appears before any payment. Contracts, warranties and terms of sale go to Thémis, our legal specialist; staff rules and HR documents go to Archive. An extract is translated free of charge, the original layout is preserved and the translation is delivered within minutes. No human reads your files, and servers are in France.

A worked example

A French company is taking on English-speaking staff. It wants to give them a translation of its staff rules and safety instructions, 4,000 words in total, from French into English at Professional level (1.8 cents per word). The quote shows €72, VAT not applicable (article 293 B du CGI).

If it also has German- and Spanish-speaking teams, it orders English, German and Spanish together: €216 before discount, a 30% multilingual discount (€64.80), so €152 in total. These are the prices shown on the quote on the day of writing; full details are on the pricing page.

When Manuce is not the right option

If an authority, a court or a foreign body requires a certified translation (judgment, civil record, Kbis extract, diploma), Manuce does not provide one: contact a translator sworn before a French court of appeal (traducteur expert près une cour d'appel). Our guide when is a sworn translation required will help you decide. Likewise, a scanned PDF without a text layer must be converted first.